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From: Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com>
To: Stephen Frost <sfrost@snowman.net>
Cc: Benjamin LaHaise <bcrl@kvack.org>,
	Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de>,
	Matthew Wilcox <matthew@wil.cx>, Andi Kleen <andi@firstfloor.org>,
	viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk, linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org,
	linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Improve lseek scalability v3
Date: Mon, 19 Sep 2011 09:30:22 -0400	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <CA+Tgmoa6CP7uwEAcu+d1vVfapj0ZhpYh2UPLZwXHg-VRnbc9QQ@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20110919123100.GJ12765@tamriel.snowman.net>

On Mon, Sep 19, 2011 at 8:31 AM, Stephen Frost <sfrost@snowman.net> wrote:
> * Benjamin LaHaise (bcrl@kvack.org) wrote:
>> For such tables, can't Postgres track the size of the file internally?  I'm
>> assuming it's keeping file descriptors open on the tables it manages, in
>> which case when it writes to a file to extend it, the internally stored size
>> could be updated.  Not making a syscall at all would scale far better than
>> even a modified lseek() will perform.
>
> We'd have to have it in shared memory and have a lock around it, it
> wouldn't be cheap at all.

In theory, we could implement a lock-free cache.  But I still think it
would be better to see this fixed on the kernel side.  If we had some
evidence that all of those lseek() calls were a performance problem
even when the i_mutex is not seriously contended, then that would be a
good argument for doing this in user-space, but I haven't seen any
such evidence.  On the other hand, the numbers I posted show that when
i_mutex IS contended, it can cause a throughput regression of up to
90%.  That seems worth fixing.  If it turns out that lseek() is too
expensive even in the uncontended case or with the i_mutex contention
removed (or if the Linux community is unwilling to accept the proposed
fix), then we can (and should) look at further optimizing it within
PostgreSQL.  My guess, though, is that an unlocked lseek will be fast
enough that we won't need to worry about installing our own caching
infrastructure (or at least, there will be plenty of more significant
performance problems to hunt down first).

-- 
Robert Haas
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company

  parent reply	other threads:[~2011-09-19 13:30 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 54+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2011-09-15 23:06 Improve lseek scalability v3 Andi Kleen
2011-09-15 23:06 ` [PATCH 1/7] BTRFS: Fix lseek return value for error Andi Kleen
2011-09-15 23:47   ` Thomas Gleixner
2011-09-16 15:48   ` Christoph Hellwig
2011-09-16 16:38     ` Andi Kleen
2011-09-17  6:10     ` Jeff Liu
2011-09-17 23:03       ` Andreas Dilger
2011-09-18  1:46         ` Andi Kleen
2011-09-18  7:29           ` Jeff Liu
2011-09-18  8:42             ` Marco Stornelli
2011-09-18 10:33               ` Jeff liu
2011-09-18 10:33                 ` Jeff liu
2011-09-18 14:55                 ` Chris Mason
2011-09-18 14:55                   ` Chris Mason
2011-09-18 14:55                   ` Chris Mason
2011-09-19 17:52                   ` Andi Kleen
2011-09-19 19:30                     ` Chris Mason
2011-09-19 19:59                       ` Andi Kleen
2011-09-19 22:55                         ` Chris Mason
2011-09-15 23:06 ` [PATCH 2/7] VFS: Do (nearly) lockless generic_file_llseek Andi Kleen
2011-09-15 23:06 ` [PATCH 3/7] VFS: Make generic lseek lockless safe Andi Kleen
2011-09-15 23:06 ` [PATCH 4/7] VFS: Add generic_file_llseek_size Andi Kleen
2011-09-16 15:50   ` Christoph Hellwig
2011-09-15 23:06 ` [PATCH 5/7] LSEEK: EXT4: Replace cut'n'pasted llseek code with generic_file_llseek_size Andi Kleen
2011-09-15 23:06 ` [PATCH 6/7] LSEEK: NFS: Drop unnecessary locking in llseek Andi Kleen
2011-09-15 23:06 ` [PATCH 7/7] LSEEK: BTRFS: Avoid i_mutex for SEEK_{CUR,SET,END} Andi Kleen
2011-09-16 13:00 ` Improve lseek scalability v3 Matthew Wilcox
2011-09-16 13:19   ` Josef Bacik
2011-09-16 14:16   ` Andres Freund
2011-09-16 14:23     ` Andi Kleen
2011-09-16 14:41       ` Andres Freund
2011-09-16 15:36     ` Matthew Wilcox
2011-09-16 17:27       ` Andres Freund
2011-09-16 17:39         ` [HACKERS] " Alvaro Herrera
2011-09-16 17:39           ` Alvaro Herrera
2011-09-16 17:50           ` [HACKERS] " Andi Kleen
2011-09-16 20:08         ` Benjamin LaHaise
2011-09-16 21:02           ` Andres Freund
2011-09-16 21:05             ` [HACKERS] " Andres Freund
2011-09-16 22:44           ` Greg Stark
2011-09-19 12:31           ` [HACKERS] " Stephen Frost
2011-09-19 12:31             ` Stephen Frost
2011-09-19 13:25             ` [HACKERS] " Matthew Wilcox
2011-09-20  7:18               ` Marco Stornelli
2011-09-20  7:18                 ` Marco Stornelli
2011-09-19 13:30             ` Robert Haas [this message]
2011-09-16 14:26   ` Andres Freund
2011-10-01 20:46 ` Andres Freund
2011-10-01 20:49   ` [PATCH 1/2] LSEEK: BTRFS: Avoid i_mutex for SEEK_{CUR,SET,END} Andres Freund
2011-11-02  8:29     ` Christoph Hellwig
2011-11-05 15:27       ` Chris Mason
2012-03-07 17:16         ` Andres Freund
2011-10-01 20:50   ` [PATCH 2/2] btrfs: Don't have multiple paths to error out in btrfs_file_llseek Andres Freund
2011-10-02  5:28   ` Improve lseek scalability v3 Andi Kleen

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